StarLaughter had found WolfStar for them, as she always said she would.
He had thrown them through the Star Gate.
He had murdered them.
Uncaringly and coldly and only for the sake of his own personal ambition and lust for power.
They had lusted themselves now for many thousands of years, and that lust consisted of only one
thing.
Revenge.
Now it was at hand.
Silently, purposefully, they descended through the pre-dawn gloom, great black leathery shapes, the
hands at the tips of their wings opening and closing in silent anticipation.
StarLaughter had allowed her hatred and disappointment and unending mortification to consume her. It
was the only comfort she had. For days she’d trailed after the massive convoy of animals and
peoples and trees, drifting just beyond arrowshot, hoping for a single glimpse of the woman that
WolfStar had abandoned her for.
The whorel
If only she were disposed of! WolfStar would surely come back to her then …
No. No! That was wrong! She should not think that!
WolfStar would never come back to her. StarLaughter could finally see that. He’d made a fool of
her in front of his trifling companions, all for the woman that he now thought to love, and for that
StarLaughter would not forgive him.
StarGrace, and all the other Hawkchilds, had been right. WolfStar was unredeemable. He would
never love her, and he would never help her regain her son.
He must die.
And, in dying, suffer as much as he’d made them to suffer.
And so StarLaughter drifted along the margins of the convoy and she waited and watched and
planned.
And finally, after days of watching, she understood.
It had not been difficult, truth to tell. WolfStar was kept under watch by the guardsmen
who wore the ivory tunics with the peculiar knot of gold in the central panel.
And so was a woman — a woman kept well guarded and well away from WolfStar, as if
she might be a danger to him … or he to her.
StarLaughter’s mouth had parted in red-lipped joy. She understood.
And she knew what she had to do.
WolfStar’s night dreams were troubled with discomfort. He found himself drifting disoriented through
cold stars. He did not know their patterns or their movements — he was lost in a distant and
unknowable part of the universe.
It frightened him beyond measure.
Strange voices touched him, but they were afar and uncaring, and after a while they left him alone.
He drifted, alone and lonely beyond measure.
Until a voice, far stronger than the others that had touched him, reached out and sent sharp knives
into his soul.
I have her.
WolfStar twisted about in the cold void, trying to find the speaker of the voice, and trying to beat
down the black wings of despair that threatened to envelop him.
I have her.
“Who are you?” WolfStar screamed into the universe, but he did not require an answer, nor even
desire one, because he knew very well to whom that voice and that hatred belonged.
StarLaughter.
I have her.
WolfStar groaned, and twisted himself out of the dream.
I have her.
The words still echoed about WolfStar’s mind as he struggled into wakefulness. He lurched up on
one elbow, and looked about, his eyes widening at the scene.
The Lake Guardsmen assigned to watch over him were lying twisted and ugly, their faces contorted
as if something heavy and dark had taken hold of their minds and twisted them until they could bear no
more.
They were dead.
Beyond the circle of WolfStar’s immediate campfire, the rest of the convoy’s sleepers lay
twisting and murmuring, as if something troubled their dreams as well.
I have her.
“You bitch!” WolfStar snarled, and sprang to his feet. “This time you will die!”
Only soft, mocking, echoing laughter answered him, and WolfStar lifted into the sky, so furious he’d
locked his hands into white-knuckled fists at his sides.
That bitch-wife of his would cause the collapse of all his plans. He would not lose Zenith now! Not
after all the work he’d put into getting her!
And he most certainly would not let StarLaughter have the satisfaction of thinking she’d succeeded in
annoying him. She would die, here and now, and this time he’d do a better job of it than the last time he’d
tried.
Zenith was gone, her watchers equally twisted and dead.
WolfStar hovered for a heartbeat or two, then he gave a powerful flap of his wings and lifted higher
into the darkened sky.
Where was she?
This way.
WolfStar followed the voice.
He did not see the other birdman lift into the sky behind him, following at a distance of several
hundred paces.
Zenith sobbed in terror. She couldn’t understand what had happened, and how everything had
gone so wrong, so quickly.
She’d woken to find the Lake Guardsmen assigned to her care twisting and convulsing at her side.
As she’d scrambled to her feet, hands had seized her from behind, their fingers digging into her flesh.
“You have been whoring about with my husband,” a flat voice whispered in her ear, “and
now, like all harlots, you must pay for your adultery.”
Zenith twisted frantically, but she could not escape StarLaughter. The demented birdwoman
physically dragged her through the sleeping convoy — past people and animals, past trees whose
branches drifted gently in the wind, and even past a snoring Urbeth — and none had wakened.
None had opened even a single eye to see Zenith being dragged past weeping and
screaming.
At Zenith’s back, StarLaughter grinned in crazed satisfaction. The kernel of power the Demons
had given her was proving useful, even to the end.
From the convoy StarLaughter dragged Zenith deep into the Urqhart Hills, refusing to respond
to the woman’s cries or questions.
StarLaughter didn’t give a damn about the woman. She had committed adultery, and she must die.
As soon as the harlot had performed her final task: attracting WolfStar to his death as well.
And so now Zenith sat hunched uncomfortably on the ground, her hands tied to a pole
behind her, listening to StarLaughter pace back and forth in the dark.
An hour before, the Hawkchilds had arrived to populate the ridges of the Urqhart Hills.
“Not long now,” StarLaughter said somewhere behind Zenith. “He has woken, and thinks to
come to your rescue.”
Zenith lowered her head, no longer weeping, utterly resigned to her death.
“Axis.”
Axis woke with a start at the word and the hand on his shoulder. He’d been lost in a dream
of Sigholt, a dream filled with laughter and love and frightful great bats that beat at his head and settled in
smothering droves over both laughter and love.
“Zared?” Axis accepted his brother’s aid to rise, silently cursing his stiff limbs and sleep-fuddled
mind.
“There is something you need to see,” Zared said. “Fast.”
Axis jumped to his feet, reaching for his axe as he did so, and allowed Zared to lead the way toward
the edge of the camp.
“Look.”
Axis squinted into the faint light now staining the sky.
He opened his mouth to say that he could see nothing, and then he shut it with a snap.
There were strange, dark shapes huddling on the craggy ridges of the Urqhart Hills that
ringed the camp.
And then, as if listening to a silent voice, each one of the shapes lifted into the lightening sky.
“Hawkchilds!” Axis said.
“And worse,” Zared said at his side, and Axis turned to stare at him.
“Worse?”
“WolfStar and Zenith have gone. Their guards are dead.”
Chapter 55
A Tastier Revenge Than Ever
Imagined
Axis turned his head and stared at Zared. His eyes were as cold as the interstellar wastes. Zared took
a half step back, even though he knew Axis’ emotion was not directed at him.
“Zenith is my daughter,” Axis said, and Zared shuddered at the combination of flatness and
desolation in his brother’s voice.
“Damn all stars into dust!” Axis screamed, and Zared cried out involuntarily. “Where is my
power when I need it most!”
DragonStar turned, and would have moved, but Qeteb’s hand snaked the distance between them and
caught him fast.
They were sitting at a small tea table covered with a snowy cloth under the blackened skeleton of a
tree on the ridge above Fernbrake Lake.
Small blue cups and saucers, and tea and sugar pots sat innocently on the linen.
“We are tied in our own immortal combat now,” the Demon said softly, hardly. “And neither you nor
I can leave it.”
“Zenith is my sister,” DragonStar whispered.
“Then what bad luck she should get herself into so much trouble right now,” Qeteb said, “just when
her brother can’t leap to her rescue.”
Qeteb grinned. He was suddenly glad he hadn’t managed to catch up with StarLaughter after all. She
was doing splendidly, just when Qeteb needed it.
He let DragonStar’s arm go, and sat back complacently. Raspu had lost, but Qeteb had more trust in